KARACHI, Jan 25: Former England opener, Geoffrey Boycott, on Wednesday blamed Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) officials for giving the country’s cricket a bad name by preparing wickets not conducive to produce results. Giving his expert opinion on a foreign TV channel, Boycott who is known to call spade a spade, claimed that the strips prepared at Lahore and Faisalabad were bad for the image of the sport as well as for Pakistan cricket.

Boycott praised the batsmen of both the teams for taking maximum advantage of ideal batting conditions but lamented that such tracks were sending wrong signals as far as cricket was concerned.

He stressed that the Pakistan batsmen could not be faulted for scoring centuries and improve their averages on placid pitches but being brought up on such batsmen-friendly tracks they in general struggle in Australia and on bouncy tracks.

Boycott’s assessment of Pakistan’s record abroad has plenty of weight as Pakistan has yet to win an away series in Australia, South Africa and the West Indies.

Former Pakistan skipper, Ramiz Raja, appearing on the same programme too agreed with Boycott and pleaded for sporting wickets.